The Practical Power of Dreams: Hanukkah and Joseph

Sermon, Shabbat Vayeshev 5784, December 8, 2023

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

I don’t know how many of you spend time viewing the Hanukkah videos that are popular on YouTube.  This is not exactly a noble pursuit, but it is a highly entertaining one.  My favorite this year is the a capella group Six13’s Taylor Swift send-up—you know, Time Magazine’s person of the year—using her biggest hits reimagined as Hanukkah songs.  There are many of these every year—who can forget Hamilton star Daveed Diggs’ song a couple of years ago, “A Puppy for Hanukkah”—if you haven’t seen it, you should, since Daveed Diggs is Jewish and his Hebrew on the blessings is impeccable.  And then there was James Corden’s boy-band version of a Hanukkah song with, among others, Zach Braff and Charlie Puth, called “Boys to Menorah.”  For obvious reasons, there were a lot of Taylor Swift parodies this year… 

One group, the Maccabeats, took its original identity from its Hanukkah parodies.  Most of these music videos, while silly, capture the essence of the Hanukkah story, the victory of the few over the many, the ability to rise in revolution against an oppressor who denies us liberty to be who we really are. 

And the truth is that these parodies also capture the nature of our own contemporary struggle against assimilation, the tendency we have to get swallowed up into a larger culture that doesn’t necessarily understand or accept other views or beliefs.  If anything, American society at this time of year, when we are supposed to be sharing goodwill towards one another, tends towards a monolithic approach to popular and religious culture.  But we Jews have always been something different, a unique culture, and belief system, a people who believe in one God and the greater mission we have to further justice in this world.  We confirm that uniqueness through our ethics, our texts, our prayers, our rituals, our music.  It is a kind of sacred dream in which we have persisted for 3800 years.

This Shabbat we begin reading the great story of Joseph in the Torah and, of course, continue to celebrate Hanukkah.  In a beautiful and meaningful way these stories connect.  They are all about exploring unlimited potential—or really, seeking to fulfill your dreams, in a pragmatic way.

Of course, in the festival of Hanukkah commemorates the victory of the Jews over their Syrian Greek overlords who wished to destroy their religious and political freedom, we remember another time when practical dreaming overcame huge obstacles.  Nearly 2200 years ago a small group of dreamers insisted that their religious freedom mattered more to them than life itself, and that they would fight and struggle and work to overcome seemingly impossible odds to claim it.  And their victory—not easily, but over years of fighting and working and, yes, dreaming—meant that today we can celebrate that freedom by praying and living as we wish.  Without the events that Hanukkah commemorates there would be no Judaism today—nor any Christianity nor Islam for that matter, nor Western Civilization as we know it.  The Maccabees dreamed of freedom and fought to achieve it for all of us.    

And, much earlier in history, in this week’s Torah portion dreams also play a central role.  Our Biblical ancestor Joseph dreamed of personal greatness, but through tribulations he learned that dreams are only achieved through work and struggle.  And so, he came to interpret others’ dreams, and eventually to act on them in pragmatic ways.  His actions eventually reunified his family and brought him back together with his father and brothers: a personal dream that became the genesis of our entire people.

To me, Judaism is pragmatic idealism, practical dreaming.  In much more contemporary times, the Zionists of the 19th and 20th century imagined Jews returning home to Israel and building a nation of our own.  It was a wild dream too; but as Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, said, “Im tirtzu ein zo Agadah—if you will it, it is no dream.”  And they created a vibrant nation that flourishes today, out of their own dreams and a great deal of extremely hard work. 

Now, when the only Jewish nation on the globe is at war against truly evil enemies who seek its total destruction, we can see how fragile that dream can be and how much care and dedication, Hanukah, it requires to preserve it.  That tiny geographical place that magnetically draws so much of the world’s negative attention, much of it focused on finding ways to assist in its destruction.  It takes a belief in that dream, and its realization, to preserve and protect it in this time of peril.

My friends, to make any dream come true you must always work in practical ways to make it become real.  That certainly has been true of our own dream here at Congregation Beit Simcha, whose 5th Anniversary we celebrate Sunday night, and it is true for every dreamer who seeks to change the world for the better—even to change just a small portion of the world.  Dreams alone don’t get it done.  But of course, if there is no dream in the first place nothing ever changes, and we never improve the world.

I think it is particularly important for young people to realize that it is their dreams, and their own ability to hold onto those dreams, that will drive the future of this society and our world.

This has been a frightening and threatening period for Jews.  Five years ago, we saw synagogues brutally shot up in Pittsburgh and then San Diego.  Three years ago a New Jersey kosher market was shot up.  But it is this year when an explosion of Antisemitism has seen groups chanting for Jewish genocide—in rhyme—on UCLA’s campus, and complete breakdown of moral standing by the presidents of Ivy League universities, who this week in Congressional testimony were unable to say that calling for the genocide of Jews was hate speech or unethical.

For years now Anti-Semitic rhetoric has cascaded on the right and the left, but since October 7th it has particularly flourished on the political left.  It is a disturbing time for our people in this incredible land of Jewish opportunity, this golden country that America has been for our people nearly since its founding.  The dream has had some overtones of nightmare lately, hasn’t it?

There have been a number of stories about Jews who normally wear them in public choosing to remove their kipot, their yarmulkes, of younger Jews hiding their Chai pendants or mezuzahs under clothing.  While understandable, this is not the right way to act.

Thirty years ago I served a small synagogue in Billings, Montana as its student rabbi.  There were antisemitic acts taken against that community, concrete blocks thrown through windows decorated for Hanukkah, hostile leaflets circulated.  The community was divided in how to respond. 

But the Christian and secular communities were not.  They came out strongly in support of their Jewish neighbors, putting up Hanukkah decorations in their own homes, rallying against hate.  I will never forget the advice I got from an older rabbi when I discussed how some Jews wanted to duck and let the wave of antisemitism pass, to avoid the publicity from the amazing non-Jewish community’s response.  He laughed: you can’t hide, he said.  And we chose—most of us—to join with those who supported us in acts of public affirmation of our Judaism and rejecting the hate that was directed towards us.  It certainly worked there in Montana, a place with few Jews but a great respect for religious freedom, for freedom in general.

At times when religious freedom, our right to live openly and proudly as Jews, has been assailed, the best response to such times is not to shrink or hide, nor is it to abandon our dreams.  In fact, the opposite is true.

This kind of challenge emphasizes the fact that it is especially true that at times of darkness it is crucial to believe in the power of dreams.  Without our Jewish ability to dream beyond the obvious, to believe in greater and higher ideals and better realities than the present ones, we would never have survived to carry on our mission.

The great poet Saul Tchernikovsky wrote a poem 125 years ago that he called his creed: it is called Sachki sachki al hachlomot, laugh, laugh at my dreams:

Laugh, laugh at all my dreams!

What I dream shall yet come true!

Laugh at my belief in humanity,

At my belief in you.

Freedom still my soul demands,

Unbartered for a calf of gold.

For still I do believe in humanity,

And in human spirit, strong and bold.

And in the future, I still believe

Though it be distant, come it will

When nations shall each other bless,

And peace at last the earth shall fill.

The reality is that we need to remember always to dream of how things can be, and we must work to achieve those dreams.  For when we do so we have the capacity to fulfill all the unlimited potential that God has implanted within us.  We can achieve truly great things, and make this a better, more just, freer, holier world.

Holding fast to our dreams gives us the strength to move beyond our fears, to embrace our proud heritage and seek to help it grow and flourish, to spread its ideals of justice, decency, faith, courage and good to the world.  This is particularly true at this time of year.  Like our patriarch Joseph, like our ancestors, the Maccabees, like the founders of the State of Israel, we have a responsibility to live up to our dreams and continue to work to make them real in this society, and in all societies in this world.

May this be God’s will, and especially, may it be ours.